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This week users got their hands on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Immediately, new conversations sprang up in our Windows 8 thread, which has been running since September of 2011 in the Ars OpenForum and now has over 400 posts. With the consumer preview exceeding 1 million downloads in 24 hours, there's a lot of interest in Microsoft's latest offering.

If you're new to the Ars forums, the Windows 8 Discussion thread is a good way to get a sense of what the Ars community is about. Some of the comments will be useful if you've yet to install the preview on your machine or tablet for a test drive. A lot of discussion right now is centered on the overhaul of the graphical user interface in Metro. Now that gestures and touch are part of the system, you can join in the conversations about what these changes mean for the operating system. If you're considering migrating to Windows 8 at a later point, reading through these posts may also help you make your decision.

If you're an interaction designer, developer or enterprise Windows administrator, or you use Windows for personal use, some of these changes may impact the way you work in the near future.

Opinions on the Consumer Preview are mixed, with Ars readers weighing on whether legacy features (like the Start menu) should stay or go. Long-time member Fulgan,thinks it should go: "I rest my case: on a desktop system, the start screen is totally useless and needs to be replaced by something better (i.e. that works)."

Hambone is not impressed by Metro: "Metro is a gamble on a vision of the future to be sure, but half-baked all the way."

As you jump into the discussion, remember Semi on'sreminder on how to avoid getting flamed: "At least one poster appears to confuse the identification of issues in the beta with complaints about a final product."

Meanwhile, Happysin says the future of Windows 8 depends on hardware: "Windows 8, to work well on a laptop or desktop, is going to require a new generation of touchscreen hardware. For anyone that doesn't have a touchscreen (i.e. nearly all current hardware), Win8 isn't going to be a good fit, and I will freely suggest staying with Win7."

Care to agree or disagree? Join the conversation. And stay tuned for Peter Bright's Sunday feature on Windows 8.

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Cesar Torres
Cesar is the Social Editor at Ars Technica. His areas of expertise are in online communities, human-computer interaction, usability, and e-reader technology. Cesar lives in New York City. Emailcesar.torres@arstechnica.com//Twitter@Urraca

185 Reader Comments

Clicking on the screen at a location which is not in any visual way whatsoever distinguished from anywhere else on the screen in order to achieve something is also (in my view) idiotic. "It's a corner..." doesn't cut it for me. Provide SOME visual cue to suggest that I can interact with this space/object.

So how do you deal with the Hot Corner feature that's been in OS X for years?

Also, moving to a corner in Windows 8 does provide visual feedback. A picture of the Start screen/Metro app pops up.

So how do you deal with the Hot Corner feature that's been in OS X for years?

On the Mac, Hot Corners trigger minor, trivial functions, each of which can be accessed several other ways (and each of which are totally customizable). Mission Control (and Spaces before that), Dashboard etc. are all available both from the Dock and from the keyboard (where, on every Mac, the specific keys have icons printed on them), and, anyway, you can live your whole life without ever using those features.

Windows 8 is totally different. Without Hot Corners, you can't do anything. The functions triggered by Hot Corners are completely central to any computing experience, and you can't get to those functions any other way.

Clicking on the screen at a location which is not in any visual way whatsoever distinguished from anywhere else on the screen in order to achieve something is also (in my view) idiotic. "It's a corner..." doesn't cut it for me. Provide SOME visual cue to suggest that I can interact with this space/object.

So how do you deal with the Hot Corner feature that's been in OS X for years?

Also, moving to a corner in Windows 8 does provide visual feedback. A picture of the Start screen/Metro app pops up.

You have a good first point actually, as I do use the hot corners in Mac OS X.

Perhaps I should say that a non-visible/non-obvious method shouldn't be the main (let alone 'only') way of doing it. There should be some way to achieve the function which is visibly obvious. Like a list of menu options, or even ribbon buttons. Or maybe even keyboard buttons like for Expose... [I'm not some sort of Mac zealot, I've gripes with Mac OS X too! :-) ]

I still object to something appearing only after I move the mouse to an otherwise totally unremarkable location.

I installed the CP today and fired it up on my dual-monitor system. Things were a lot more mixed than I expected (I was expecting negative things, mostly, and I'm a Windows Phone user).

Pros:- Clean install took about 8 minutes on a Vertex 2 SSD, from a DVD.- Multi monitor support, including multi-screen taskbars with multiple settings for how programs show up on them, plus easy support for different wallpapers or panoramic wallpapers. Neat.- On login, one monitor shows the start screen while the other shows the desktop. Click anywhere on the desktop and start screen goes away.- The new task manager is awesome. - The ribbon (here's a bit of con) doesn't fit that well, but it puts options like viewing file extensions fewer clicks away. That's a good thing.- The new right click menu in the bottom left corner is pure win. Everything anyone could need, from "run" and control panel to more arcane tools, arranged pretty much in order of frequency of use. - The slightly flattened and squared off refinements to Aero are a plus in my opinion.- No start menu means that much more room for applications in the taskbar.

Cons:- The start screen is fine for doing start-screeny things, but I totally agree that the way Metro apps and regular programs coexist right now needs some help. On the other hand, I'm not sure why I'd ever have to use a Metro app, so this is just from playing around with them for the sake of it. And if I were in Metro 100% while using a tablet or something it appears that it would work fine.- The task switcher invoked from the top left hot corner in particular is odd to use with the mouse. So is the start screen. They need to change it so that once the little preview window appears for either, you can simply click that preview window to activate it rather than having to keep the mouse on the edge pixel.- Get rid of the giant clock and battery overlay that pops up with the charms when invoking charms from the desktop. It just looks stupid and it's redundant. I can see why it's there on a tablet, of course.- Get rid of the "bouncy" scrolling effect when scrolling with a mouse. It's cute and responsive when you're using your finger but just feels sloppy and incongruous when using a mouse wheel.- You have to hit a key to "unlock" before logging in. Let me just type in my password, please.

Honestly, I think if they go through and polish it up so that things work more cleanly in the desktop the OS will be just fine. Right now there are enough small upgrades to the "classic" parts of the OS and the desktop is easy enough to get to and stay in that I'll probably upgrade, but it could use improvement for sure.

Two last things. Please, MS, just suck it up and put in a control panel setting that lets people start up to the desktop without the start screen. You already show the desktop immediately for multi-monitor users, so why force people to see the start screen at all on boot if they don't want to? It's not like Win7 started up with the start menu opened by default. And second, dear lord, I hope someone puts together a first-boot tutorial for those hot corners.

I've been playing around with Windows 8 for a few days now--maybe three days--and I'm surprisingly--because the Metro UI struck me as exceedingly "ooooogly" in the beginning--very pleased with what I've seen so far. It often seems so much faster than win7 at a variety of things that it's like win7 is suddenly mired in tree sap, or a bog of molasses... I also saved myself a lot of angst if some of the posts in this thread are to be believed by installing it to a clean and separate and exclusive hard drive partition.

But I think that at least some of that is because the logic behind the Win8 ui is much less convoluted than the more contrived nuances of Vista and Win7. To be sure, though--I liked Vista at release, and liked Win7 even more, since they were birds of a feather--but the Windows 8 PC desktop seems to be letting go of the traditional Windows UI elements (as comfortable to some as the proverbial "old shoe," unfortunately) simply because they have become trite, hackneyed, and actually less efficient for the tasks at hand than the new Windows 8 ui. I might sum up the impression by saying that Vista/Win7 do things very well by degrees whereas Win 8 (at least so far) cuts through the "red tape" by whole angles instead of plodding through by degrees. But that's only what we should expect out of fundamental progress.

Also, my interest in Win8 is strictly for the PC versions, entirely. I'm psychologically adverse to touch screens and a plethora of other cheap gimmicks as well ! (It's the guy behind me in line who is interested in the Skyhook and in the Fountain-of-Youth DIY Botox Kit(TM)--not me.).

So far, I'm two thumbs up for Win 8--*and* I'm happy to say that Win 8 is nothing like Vista, and by that I do not imply that Vista was "bad." On the contrary, Vista was very good and a huge improvement over XP. It's just that at this stage of my experience with Windows 8 I'd say that Win8 is at least double the improvement over Win7 that Vista was over XP.

Amazing thing is that this time last week I did not expect to have this attitude and I thought it highly unlikely that Win 8 would remain in the same weight class as Win7, let alone surpass it in any way. Whereas Win7 embodied the epitome of what a great Windows OS should be, Win 8 goes beyond that to show us what a great Windows OS *will be* in the years ahead. While giving away or ceding nothing to the past, Windows 8 at the same time charts a brand new course for Windows--but it's a course of more efficient logic as opposed to more brazen gimmicks and fads. It's a tribute to Microsoft that the company did not stop for a moment to think about how impressive Windows 7 had become, and did not rest on its laurels, basking in the limelight, until it was overtaken by a lean and hungry competitor with no such illusions. Not only is Win 8 a doorway to the future, but it's also simply the best practical solution to today's computer and networking products available. IMHO, of course.

I'm actually having !fun! with this Win 8 Consumer Preview--and even at this level of development, months away from RC status, still, it is pretty darned solid. There's no doubt that this shift from the traditional path that Microsoft has followed for so long will be controversial--at least for awhile. But one thing about the company that I see no change in whatsoever is the fact that at its core Microsoft is a company far more concerned with substance than with style, unlike some companies, who shall remain nameless here, who also continue to follow their own diehard mantras of style instead of substance. I can't wait to see what the release versions of Win 8 will bring!

The insistence of Metro UI & Apps to take over the entire screen is so irritating. It is ridiculous. The work you do on the desktop is not the same as what a user might do on a tablet. Microsoft's stubbornness in shoehorning full-screen single task tablet metaphor into a desktop is quite strange. The pathetic split screen does not even register as an attempt to allow multi-tasking.

Someone else also mentioned this - the metaphor for using search in the charms bar for all metro apps is stupid. On my 27inch screen pretty much the entire screen is unused by the metro apps. Like dictionary.com app - why do I have to go Move mouse to right-hand top corner -> drag mouse down -> click on Search when almost the entire screen is used by the app?

The screen real estate might be at premium in tablets but for f**k sake I am not using a tablet. I am using a quad core desktop with multiple GB's of RAM and huge screen. I want to have multiple apps on my screen at the same time. Something as basic as this should not be Microsoft's choice, it is the user's choice.

I can understand people not liking the look or feel of a particular interface, but I think that there is some massive exaggeration here.

Using the consumer preview, I'm trying to figure out how some people might consider it "awful". Truth be told, the preview programs are a bit buggy, and a few need overhauls, but in general I find this to be a big improvement.

Honestly, the Start menu was poor in my experience. I don't prefer using it, but often it is the quickest way to find rarely-seen programs or files. I feel like some people will feel the same about the Start screen.

I do feel that Aero needs to be flattened a bit (the basic theme for the desktop actually seems nicely fitting), but overall the options are nice. The Calendar and Email apps, while currently feature limited, are easily more user-friendly (and visually inviting) than Microsoft's alternatives (some of which deserve the word "awful").

Let's be honest about one thing. Metro is not difficult to use; it is simply unfamiliar. Some of the things you know how to do on Windows 7 (or XP, or whatever) seem intuitive now, because they either built on something you used long, long ago or they retrospectively seem obvious to you. But my mom has a much easier time with Metro than with Windows 7's interface.

Some things are not immediately obvious, but you're using a pre-release version, so don't expect a primer. Everything that's been changed or introduced takes a grand total of two minutes to figure out. As for the "shutoff" location issue, it is one extra step, and it's in the most intuitive spot given a) your options and b) the frequency of use. Plus, you know where it is after the first time. It takes about 3 seconds to get to.

If you want to talk about unintuitive interfaces, we'll talk Adobe. Windows 8 is a work-in-progress. It's hard to judge a film by it's trailer, and we're kind of doing that. It could go either way.

I can see a lot of people disagree with me. But I can't help but feel like a lot of it is just dealing with unfamiliarity, or exaggerating the difficulties of an interface without presenting many details or perspective. If you think I'm full of it, then explain your pains, because I honestly don't see what the big fuss is all about.

The insistence of Metro UI & Apps to take over the entire screen is so irritating. It is ridiculous. The work you do on the desktop is not the same as what a user might do on a tablet. Microsoft's stubbornness in shoehorning full-screen single task tablet metaphor into a desktop is quite strange. The pathetic split screen does not even register as an attempt to allow multi-tasking.

Someone else also mentioned this - the metaphor for using search in the charms bar for all metro apps is stupid. On my 27inch screen pretty much the entire screen is unused by the metro apps. Like dictionary.com app - why do I have to go Move mouse to right-hand top corner -> drag mouse down -> click on Search when almost the entire screen is used by the app?

The screen real estate might be at premium in tablets but for f**k sake I am not using a tablet. I am using a quad core desktop with multiple GB's of RAM and huge screen. I want to have multiple apps on my screen at the same time. Something as basic as this should not be Microsoft's choice, it is the user's choice.

I'll agree that the lack of a 1:1 Metro split screen is strange. Aero snap is one of my most-used features in Windows 7.

Honestly, though, I don't use more than two windows 99% of the time. It usually isn't practical, and I usually just shift window focus anyway. I can't speak for you, obviously, but I feel like it's a limitation in Metro that isn't really bad at all when you consider the competition tablet-wise (only the Quickapps on the Galaxy Tab come close). Browsing the internet or working on a music program while messaging takes up a slice of the screen seems very fine to me.

When you need to go beyond that, there's the desktop mode.

Maybe 9 will fuse Metro and Aero functionality, but it was inevitable that 8 would have to be transitional.

All the apps are disappearing into Metroland, and while they might offer half-assed legacy UI's, how long is that actually going to last?

Well that’s lasted roughly 15 years so far. “Half-assed legacy” built Microsoft’s fortunes as we know it.

Which is why it is so surprising that they are actually cutting the cord with WOA. They are trying to float that without the legacy support. It is going to need to survive on execution, along with whatever help name recognition can provide. I don’t hold much hope for WOAs prospects, though. Engineering tolerances are still too tight on mobile for hardware builders, and market demands vs technology are likely to keep it that way for some time, to have arms-length control over the OS.

I've tried both developer preview and consumer preview and I say it's gone worse, The UI is so different that no one will want to change, like companies gave options to "downgrade" from vista to xp, I think there will be a lot people wanting to "downgrade" to windows 7, You can't access ANYTHING the way you used to and that just says a lot.

All the apps are disappearing into Metroland, and while they might offer half-assed legacy UI's, how long is that actually going to last?

Well that’s lasted roughly 15 years so far. “Half-assed legacy” built Microsoft’s fortunes as we know it.

Which is why it is so surprising that they are actually cutting the cord with WOA. They are trying to float that without the legacy support. It is going to need to survive on execution, along with whatever help name recognition can provide. I don’t hold much hope for WOAs prospects, though. Engineering tolerances are still too tight on mobile for hardware builders, and market demands vs technology are likely to keep it that way for some time, to have arms-length control over the OS.

Just give me a option to boot to my desktop in W8 with a Start button. Metro is fine for phones and tablets but don't screw with my desktop! Give me the damn Start button! Don't force change on my desktop. I will learn Metro when I get a phone or tablet! Hear that Verizon? Still waiting but not for long since my phone is about shot! AT&T here I come.....

Just give me a option to boot to my desktop in W8 with a Start button. Metro is fine for phones and tablets but don't screw with my desktop! Give me the damn Start button! Don't force change on my desktop. I will learn Metro when I get a phone or tablet! Hear that Verizon? Still waiting but not for long since my phone is about shot! AT&T here I come.....

Well, you can in fact disable the Metro Start Screen and restore the Start Button, though it requires some fiddling.

That said, there's no need to "learn Metro" or anything of the sort. You can continue using Windows 8 like you always have, but with what amounts to a full screen Start Menu. You don't need to use any Metro apps whatsoever, and honestly on a desktop there's little real reason to do so (at least so far; maybe some good Metro apps will be made to make it worthwhile).

The disparity between Metro Apps and Desktop Apps is somewhat jarring, and an issue with Win8, but it's one I don't really see a solution to.

But, there seems to be a great deal of confusion about Metro. You don't need to use the full Metro UI, and it's existence doesn't really impact normal desktop use at all. The Metro Start Screen is equivalent or superior to the Start Menu in every way. That's it.

Apps can be organized, launched, shown, hidden, searched all extremely efficiently. Either click in the bottom left corner of the screen (where most people's start buttons were anyways) or just hit the Windows key to bring up the Start Screen, and either click on what you want or just start typing.

You can "Zoom Out" to show *everything* that's installed on your system (still grouped as you defined for pinned apps and per application alphabetically for the rest), or just view the normal set of apps you use regularly.

Launching a desktop app then requires equal or fewer mouse-clicks than it did with the Start Menu: Pinned apps are pinned apps, and launched by opening the menu/screen then clicking the pinned app; unpinned apps are opened via typing the name or clicking through All Programs > Program Folder > Launcher or, with the start screen, clicking the bottom right corner to zoom out and clicking it from the automatically sorted list.

Once you install a full load of desktop apps the Metro Start screen becomes a sea of obscurity. Finding your apps isn't a searching for needle in haystack, it is searching for a needle in a needlestack. Furthermore your are moving your mouse over the full breadth of the screen, even panning the page, if it is full.

Meanwhile a small localized hierarchy means finding is easy, movement is minimal. The Metro start screen simply has no reason to intrude on the conventional desktop, it is a backward step.

Once you install a full load of desktop apps the Metro Start screen becomes a sea of obscurity. Finding your apps isn't a searching for needle in haystack, it is searching for a needle in a needlestack. Furthermore your are moving your mouse over the full breadth of the screen, even panning the page, if it is full.

Meanwhile a small localized hierarchy means finding is easy, movement is minimal. The Metro start screen simply has no reason to intrude on the conventional desktop, it is a backward step.

That's pretty disingenuous. The Start Screen shot is utterly unorganized - there's no reason for your start screen to look like that. You can group entries together, and name the groups. So, you're using a random hodge-podge unorganized Start Screen and a Start Menu that someone has taken a fair amount of time to organize.

Finding your apps on the Start Screen is just like finding them in the Start Menu. They are where you put them. You can freely unpin anything, safely knowing you can always simply start typing to bring it up later if you need it.

That's pretty disingenuous. The Start Screen shot is utterly unorganized - there's no reason for your start screen to look like that. You can group entries together, and name the groups. So, you're using a random hodge-podge unorganized Start Screen and a Start Menu that someone has taken a fair amount of time to organize.

Finding your apps on the Start Screen is just like finding them in the Start Menu. They are where you put them. You can freely unpin anything, safely knowing you can always simply start typing to bring it up later if you need it.

It really isn't because, you still don't have a hierarchy in the Metro start screen, they are still spread all over the screen if you drag them into groups of some kind, and as I said you are still moving your mouse all over the screen end even scrolling/panning for more.

As opposed to very small localized movement dealing with a neat little hierarchy.

And I am still waiting for your instructions on turfing Metro out of desktop and returning the start menu.

That's pretty disingenuous. The Start Screen shot is utterly unorganized - there's no reason for your start screen to look like that. You can group entries together, and name the groups. So, you're using a random hodge-podge unorganized Start Screen and a Start Menu that someone has taken a fair amount of time to organize.

Finding your apps on the Start Screen is just like finding them in the Start Menu. They are where you put them. You can freely unpin anything, safely knowing you can always simply start typing to bring it up later if you need it.

It really isn't because, you still don't have a hierarchy in the start screen, they are still spread all over the screen if you drag them into groups of some kind, and as I said you are still moving your mouse all over the screen end even scrolling/panning for more.

As opposed to very small localized movement dealing with a neat little hierarchy.

How many applications are you looking to have installed, and pinned, simultaneously? A screenful, maybe two? There's no need to have every single application pinned. Those that are not are still available when you click All Apps, and are organized into groups based on the start menu folders they created when installed.

As to the actual screen distances involved, there's pros and cons there. A common issue with setting up your Start Menu like that (actually, why I've long disliked the start menu overall) is that while drilling down through the hierarchy even a small "miss" with your mouse movement closes and opens different folders, making it awkward to click buried entries.

If you have your mouse resolution/sensitivity turned down really low, it's easy to manage the precision to avoid that problem, but then you need to make huge physical movements to cross the screen with your mouse, which is (imho) far worse.

If your resolution/sensitivity is higher, you can easily cross the screen with a small movement of the mouse making larger moves trivial, while the larger icons are easy click targets.

I'm finding I have everything I commonly use, grouped just like that start menu, on my Start Screen (without scrolling) easily. From there, I can scroll the screen (mouse wheel) to get at lesser used utilities. Oddball apps can be launched via All Apps or search. Though, really, I find I never actually bother doing that. More and more, it's just winlogo+first couple letters of the app I want+enter to launch, but that's just me.

What I'm saying here is that if you take the time to learn, you can organize the Start Screen too. It's not hard to have it well organized and concise.

As to the actual screen distances involved, there's pros and cons there. A common issue with setting up your Start Menu like that (actually, why I've long disliked the start menu overall) is that while drilling down through the hierarchy even a small "miss" with your mouse movement closes and opens different folders, making it awkward to click buried entries.

If you have your mouse resolution/sensitivity turned down really low, it's easy to manage the precision to avoid that problem, but then you need to make huge physical movements to cross the screen with your mouse, which is (imho) far worse.

If your resolution/sensitivity is higher, you can easily cross the screen with a small movement of the mouse making larger moves trivial, while the larger icons are easy click targets.

On my 24" desktop, using desktop apps, I have my mouse sensitivity set so navigating application interfaces works well. This means mostly traveling small-ish distances hitting small-ish targets. Think "MS Office ribbon" for instance.The start menu has much the same scale, so the sensitivity and hand movement involved is much the same.The start screen has a completely different scale, and the transition between desktop app and start screen isn't good.

Another issue is the visual scanning involved. On my 11" laptop, I can quickly scan the entire screen (although a fullscreen launcher is still big enough to slow me down). On my 24" desktop it makes it significantly slower for me to spot the thing I'm looking for with a fullscreen launcher. The start screen icons are also too large for comfort.

I'd definitely like to see some customization of the desktop Start Screen, with those very things. An overall scale setting in particular, as well as margin control to change how much open space is around the actual usable area.

Because really, the ideal tile size is going to vary dramatically based on a vast number of factors: screen size, resolution, input device specifics, and personal dexterity to name a few. This is a problem with the start menu as well, mind you, and something I find Microsoft notorious for: taking a generally good concept, and doing everything in their power to make customization as difficult as possible.

I am doing my best this week to get my hands on a testing setup so I can spend more time with this. Or better yet, it may be time for me to install via Parallels. However, on a Macbook Air, that does not sound like a good idea.

If you have Parallels 6, don't install the Parallels Tools on Windows 8. It made mousing almost impossible, at least for me. I don't know about Parallels 7, haven't felt the need to upgrade.Windows 8 runs well in Parallels. I find the metro interface pretty but so far less useful.

Metro is quite nice on windows phone and I think they have the potential to take a piece of the smart phone market. Win8 on the other hand is a horrible concept.

Imagine that you walk into a big box computer store with cash in your pocket, on the right you have the windows universe, there are PCs and laptops and tablets all running the same OS, the desktops are crippled by wasting screen real estate on full-screen apps and the tablets are crippled be having a large share of the settings and many apps buried on a old fashioned desktop.

Then on the left there is this cool guy in a black shirt that has a tablet with a perfectly integrated multi-touch OS with no finicky desktop elements and desktops/laptops that have offer a full desktop experience with the sort of multitasking that you expect on a personal computer.

I would love a windows phone tablet, too bad they decided to shoehorn the tablet OS into the desktop OS product. I would also love a desktop OS that used the visual styling of metro. Win8 is the worst of both worlds

Metro is quite nice on windows phone and I think they have the potential to take a piece of the smart phone market. Win8 on the other hand is a horrible concept.

Imagine that you walk into a big box computer store with cash in your pocket, on the right you have the windows universe, there are PCs and laptops and tablets all running the same OS, the desktops are crippled by wasting screen real estate on full-screen apps and the tablets are crippled be having a large share of the settings and many apps buried on a old fashioned desktop.

Then on the left there is this cool guy in a black shirt that has a tablet with a perfectly integrated multi-touch OS with no finicky desktop elements and desktops/laptops that have offer a full desktop experience with the sort of multitasking that you expect on a personal computer.

I would love a windows phone tablet, too bad they decided to shoehorn the tablet OS into the desktop OS product. I would also love a desktop OS that used the visual styling of metro. Win8 is the worst of both worlds

Apple going to eat MS' lunch.

disclaimer: I have never owned an apple product in my life.

What's preventing you from harnessing the full desktop of Windows 8, in addition to Metro apps?

What's preventing you from harnessing the full desktop of Windows 8, in addition to Metro apps?

I would prefer not use both, that is the point. On a large screen desktop system a full screen app is a productivity killer for power users that have adapted their workflow for multiple visible windows. At present you can be a "full desktop" user of win8 but as more apps go metro native you are going to have little choice but to abandon the windows that contain your work items to pop up a full screen app to do some task. while in that full screen app you cannot compare/assimilate content from your other work items, as they are needlessly obscured. This is a sacrifice many would be willing to make in exchange for the extreme portability of a table, but on a desktop workstation it is sacrifice with no pay-off.

But the question is perhaps silly, the best way to harness the full power of the windows desktop is to use windows 7, the best way to experience the slick Metro interface is to purchase a windows phone. Windows8 offers you a diluted, confused version of both

Once you install a full load of desktop apps the Metro Start screen becomes a sea of obscurity. Finding your apps isn't a searching for needle in haystack, it is searching for a needle in a needlestack. Furthermore your are moving your mouse over the full breadth of the screen, even panning the page, if it is full.

Meanwhile a small localized hierarchy means finding is easy, movement is minimal. The Metro start screen simply has no reason to intrude on the conventional desktop, it is a backward step.